This antique color plate features a colorful image of a Kingbird. The print comes from the book The Second Book of Birds, Bird Families by Olive Thorne Miller. The book was copyrighted by H.M. Miller in 1901 and published by Houghton, Mifflin and Company of Boston and New York through The Riverside Press, Cambridge in June of 1901. The book originally sold for $1.00. The color plates are from designs by Louis Agassiz Fuertes.

This color illustration of the Kingbird, although beautiful, doesn’t tell the whole story. The bird has the curious habit of eating bees, but he only eats the drones, which make no honey. He is also fond of eating the robber fly, which destroys honey bees. This makes the bird a friend of the bee-keeper. The print is professionally matted in an 8” x 10” pale green colored matte to setoff the beauty of the bird. Our vintage prints are shipped in a plastic sleeve between cardboard stiffeners to arrive in perfect condition.

Keep in mind, an antique print will never be “perfect” like a new print and there are sometimes tiny occasional spots and/or discoloring or aging. However, we only sell mint or almost mint prints and will not sell anything that we would not be proud to hang on our own walls!!!